Sentimentality
by Sock and Broh
Summary: N would always like photographs.  He liked being able to look at one and remember everything from the day it was taken.  Not everything revolved around the past, though.  Things change, and fall apart, and must be put back together again.


Sentimentality

_a one-shot in the Color Wheel 'verse_

by Sock and Broh

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><p>Stories in the Color Wheel Universe:<p>

(_italics = upcoming, _normal = published, **bold = the story you're reading**)

_Color Wheel_

Past Artifice

**Sentimentality**

_Carbon Copies_

_It Was Destiny_

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><p>Sentimentality<p>

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><p>N always liked photographs. He could remember the sleek ones in his picture books way back, when that was all he really had. The one about Zorua still had the corner bitten off on page four, when his own little black fox had gotten quite rowdy in his attempts to get his Trainer to play. Over the years, the gloss and shine faded to finger print smudges and well-worn bindings and dog-eared pages. He was still fond of the sound books made the first time you cracked their spines – still felt the childish excitement when starting a new story.<p>

He liked the schmaltziness of them, really. (Let it never be said that N was anything _but_ an idealist.) Being able to look at one and remember everything from the day it was taken. Convenience, thoughtfulness, remembrance. Capturing the beauty of an event in a piece of glossed-up paper. Polaroid, digital – whatever it happened to be.

It was his personal belief that photographs were like paper dream catchers for the memory. Memory catchers, then? It just didn't roll off the tongue like it should have. So the sentiment-catching paper remained photographs, no matter how similar to dream catchers they were.

Ever since Touko had moved in with him several months ago, N had begun his own little collection of memories. He never wanted to forget the time he spent with Touko, so the convenience of photography called to him. When they had gone to the store for household items, N had picked up a sleek black album and placed it in the cart. Touko responded with a knowing smirk – her eyes glimmering with mirth.

Squares of memory lined each page of his photo album. He and Touko on their first real date. _N was no longer nervous taking Touko out, as their unofficial dates totaled over a dozen by then._ Cheren, Bianca, Touko and himself in Castelia City. _He was still amazed at how quickly he had grown to make friends with Cheren and Bianca in just a few short months, and in turn, grown on the two as well._ He and Touko with their Pokémon – minus Reshiram and Zekrom, of course. _Touko's Pokemon were all very photogenic that day, though it may have been because they were excited about the impromptu picnic in Pinwheel Forest._

The album was so full by now that N would need a new one within the week.

"You're about as sentimental as a grandpa," Touko teased him over their breakfast one morning. "It's like living with a taller version of my brother!" When N frowned at her, she simply clicked her tongue and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "Don't worry – I think it's endearing." She stood and stretched out her rested body. "Well, let's get going, then!"

But N would always like photographs. Maybe that was why he liked talking with Touya whenever he and Touko visited her mother at home. Touya had a picture – a memory – for every moment in his lifetime as well.

Touya was reluctant to share these memories at first. He still remembered all the bitter nonsense things N had shrieked at him, and Touko told him Touya was always one to hold a grudge, like some human Ninetales.

Those words were like phantoms from the poltergeist's mouth now to the green-haired man. Dead words. Dead memories. _Oh please, don't remind me!_ He would admit that he'd messed up, yes, but he still had hope that Touya would let go; and let go he had.

To his great relief, Touya was rather fond of him now; N wasn't really one to spend time with others, but out of any of his friends, Touya was perhaps the one person he found himself capable of spending hours at a time talking about anything that happened to come up. Unless it was math – Touya had no idea how to solve a triangle for its cosine, and didn't have the desire to find out. N had a hard time paying attention to all of the stories Touya told him about theater and musicals anyway. For the sake of easy conversation, the two steered away from math and Touya's line of work.

Often times, they would just sit together and look at photo albums. Touya could recall every detail about the day the picture was taken, if asked kindly enough. N marveled at his friend's memory – he had never been able to extract that much detail, even with the aid of a photograph.

"It's pretty useful sometimes," Touya shrugged, "but only when you're storytelling. And these are the kinds of stories you only share with people that you're close to, you know?"

N understood entirely what Touya meant.

Today, they were sat down on the floor of Touya's bedroom, backs against the edge of the plain blue bedspread. It wasn't entirely comfortable to sit like the two were – with their sides making full contact – and at one point, Touya had groused under his breath and scooted a good inch or two away from N to avoid touching him. His cheeks had been dusted a subtle, becoming pink, much like what happened when Touko was nervous or embarrassed. N would have asked him about it, but he decided to spare Touya's dignity, rather than quell his curiosity.

The photo album (a rustic, large thing; like a tome N had seen in childhood when he snuck into his father's office, sitting on his father's bookshelf – and never mind the scolding he'd gotten for that venture) sat open, lain flat between the laps of the two men. Together they pored over the pictures, laughing at the silly faces. N often had to ask questions – that particular photo album dated back to before he'd been friends with this close-knit group of Trainers.

There were plenty of pictures he didn't quite understand, but didn't have the desire to break their companionable silence just to ask a simple question. His eyes scanned them all and stored them away in his memory bank anyway.

One was of Touya sleeping with his covers pulled all the way up to his nose. Touko was lying down next to him in her pajamas, holding the camera above with one hand and giving a thumb up with the other, flashing a ridiculous grin. N laughed and shook his head while Touya narrowed his eyes and reluctantly smiled.

Another that he noticed had Touko and Touya at the breakfast table; smiling over their food at whoever was taking the picture (N assumed it was their mother). Touko had a bit of syrup on the corner of her mouth, with her feet on the chair and her knees drawn up to her chest. For all the world her opposite, Touya sat primly in his chair across the table, his smile quiet and subdued – a perfect contrasting element to the brilliant grin his sister wore on his left.

The next image that caught his attention was a shot of Touko's room – if the girlish bedspread didn't give it away, it was the fact that Touya's room looked more familiar to him – in total disrepair. Bianca's eyes were wide as she surveyed the damage, holding her fist timidly to her mouth. Cheren looked very irritated as he crossed his arms and scowled. Touko sat next to a flat-screen television with her arm propped up on it, winking. It looked to be the only thing in the room that had gone untouched.

"When did you take this one?" N asked, referring to the fourth picture down on the seventh page.

Touko stood with her arms bent at the elbows, hands placed firmly on her hips. She was grinning as her Oshawott – _What was her name again? Kyoto!_ – stood at attention by her feet, and had her head turned toward Cheren, an eyebrow raised. Cheren crossed his arms and did his best to look stoic, but couldn't help the small smile that broke his façade, with how friendly Touya was being – the brunet had his arm thrown across Cheren's shoulders and gave a two-fingered salute, jubilant and carefree like N had never seen before. A little Snivy belonged to both trainers, but it was obvious whose was whose. Touya's stood on his sneaker, hugging his leg cheerfully. Cheren's stood aloof, hiding most of his body behind his Trainer's leg. Bianca looked to be excited, but she wrung her hands on her bag's strap, while her Tepig tugged on her skirt in his best attempt to gain Bianca's attention. If one looked closely enough, in the background, pink petals danced on invisible winds, bringing springtime air with a flourish.

Touya smiled fondly at the picture as he stroked his thumb across the glossy surface. "Professor Juniper took it for us after she taught us how to catch Pokémon on Route One. It's the first picture we took as Pokémon Trainers."

N remembered the pictures before this one, and it _did_ make sense. This was the album of their journey. From there on in, the pictures were fewer, with far more separations between them. The four friends must have traveled at their own paces and grown apart, as life intended. Still, N couldn't help the small pang of sympathy resonating in his heart.

The next picture was a quick shot, without flash – the lighting was a bit poor, and that was how N could tell it was taken hastily. That and the fact that it was a photo of Touya sticking his middle finger up at Ghetsis during his speech in Accumula Town, and Touko pretending to shoot him in the head with a finger gun a little further away. The Cheren in the photograph scowled at Touko and (most likely) attempted to pull her arm down to avoid Ghetsis seeing. N laughed along with Touya at the ridiculousness of it. He ignored that fact that you could just make a bit of green hair out in the background, expression blurred but unmistakably enraptured with the lies Ghetsis was feeding to the crowd.

Touya flipped to another page, and N instantly recognized the cityscape in one photograph as Castelian. Bianca was clutching her Munna close, eyes wide and watery and speaking yards of thankfulness. Touko looked messy and rushed but nonetheless smiled down at her Dewott. Touya's Servine hugged his neck, pushing his hat upward slightly with the force of his action, while Touya grinned sheepishly at his Pokémon.

Next to the shot was one of Cheren out in the desert, his hair windswept and gritty. He looked far more severe with the harsh contrast of the atmosphere as background. Cheren's expression was odd. The black-haired teen looked more contemplative than calculating.

There was one up in the top-right corner – N pointed at it with his index finger. "What's this one?"

Touya tilted his head and slowly smiled. "I remember this one! I took it just after meeting up with Touko and Bianca in Nimbasa City."

Three friends stood together outside the Pokémon Musical building. Bianca looked light and free, like all of her worries had disappeared. Touya was grinning so widely that his face must have hurt, as if he were at home in the dramatic glitz and glam of Nimbasa. Next to him, Touko just barely managed a smile. Something spoke in her eyes of sleeplessness. Her shoulders were sagged and her skin much paler than usual, lacking its familiar cold glow.

N knew why Touko looked so dead compared to the others. He swallowed hard, and turned his attention away from that painful reminder that _yes, he _had_ ruined Touko's journey._

"Touko was bitching about you before that," Touya smirked, looking at N from the corners of his eyes. "You don't need to look so guilty if you apologized for it already."

"I can't help it," N answered, shaking his head. "It's just…rather upsetting."

"You don't need to apologize for it, so don't listen to him," Touko chimed in as she entered Touya's room. As soon as she was close enough to do so, she picked the photo album up and sat herself down on N's lap; her toes curled into Touya's pant legs where they touched at an angle. "Really, Touya! You act like everyone needs to _redeem_ themselves in order to live a guilt-free life."

"They _do_."

Touko laughed and rolled her eyes, reaching over to pinch her brother's cheek. "Don't be so bitter all the time! It really doesn't suit you at all." Touya slapped his sister's hand away and rubbed at his cheek, which was slowly turning red from the force Touko had put behind the action.

Graciously, N decided to change the subject. He wrapped an arm around Touko's waist and gently squeezed, puffing air out that blew the girl's hair away from her ear on the right side. "_So._ What were you and your mother talking about?"

"Yeah." Touya seemed to have cooled down enough. "What'd mom want to talk about?"

"Oh, you know – the usual." Touko sighed, her quirky smile morphing into something a little closer to exasperation. "Just wondering what I plan on doing with my life, why I'm such a deadbeat but still manage to lead a decent life. Same old, same old."

Touya snorted. "Mom's never going to learn, is she?"

"That her children are unaccomplished, moneyless failures? Don't think so."

"I resent that." Touya kicked playfully at Touko's ankle, grinning. "_Sometimes_ I have a job – and I _do_ make money."

"Enough to afford a crappy apartment, yeah. Good on ya, Touya!" Touko clapped her hands next to her brother's ear.

N frowned. "Play nice, Touko." He grabbed her hands and put them back on top of the photo album in her lap.

"It's more than _you_ make, Miss I'm-Going-to-Wander-Aimlessly-Until-I-Find-my-Purpose-in-Life!"

"_Touya_," N chided, feeling very much stuck in the middle – a place he would rather _not_ be when it involved the two siblings. "Let's drop it, okay?"

"I live in an actual _home_." Touko pointed out with an arrogant smirk that _really_ had no right existing, and should have crawled under a rock for fear of being seen in the light of day again.

"_Touko!_"

"You live with N, and you don't pay for anything. Therefore, your argument is invalid."

"Guys, can we please not—" N's protest went ignored once again.

"Your _face_ is invalid!"

"Nice comeback, Touko."

"Nicer than your apartment?"

N sighed. "I wish Cheren were here…"

"Mr. Champion doesn't have much time for us anymore." Touya stretched his arms up and locked his hands behind his neck. "So it stands to reason that you're going to have to do better than _that_ if you want to stop familial bickering."

Touko hid her face in N's shirt collar. He could feel her lips pull up into a grin when she did that. "I won, by the way."

"It's not a competition." N held his hand up to silence Touya before he could even open his mouth. "Both of you are acting childish." Touko pulled her head away from its hiding place and stuck her tongue out at her brother. Touya repaid the favor. "See? You just proved my point."

"You're right." Touko held her hands up in defeat. "I'm sorry, Touya. Do you still love me?" Having lived with Touko, N knew from her tone of voice that she was teasing her brother.

"I used to wish I had a sibling. Now I don't," N deadpanned.

Touya laughed, his cheerful demeanor now restored. "We'll ruin that for you. But hey, we've saved you from pointless wanting! You should thank us."

In the soft silence that chased after Touya's statement, N could both feel and hear Touko breathing. Such a simple thing never ceased to amaze him – it was in the sound, he figured. Breathing was quite innocuous, and even somewhat monotonous in its natural tone. When Touko breathed, it was less dense, and more airy, taking the character of the wind rushing through her curls and converting the innate substance into something more useful. Dimly, he heard Touko's heart beating a steady rhythm. It was rare for her heart to ever race out of control. When it did, though, N swore it sounded much like a frantic metal darbuka – clay in the hands of the Middle Eastern player to model as he wished.

"We should probably be going." Touko frowned, her attention focused on the sky outside. "It's a long flight back to Lacunosa, and you know how it is there."

"Mm," N hummed in agreement.

With a sigh, Touya pushed himself up onto his feet and shouldered his bag. "Guess so! I'm looking forward to seeing you guys again. If you stop by Nimbasa sometime soon, you should come visit for a while. It's days like this that really make me realize how much I miss my sister."

"I'll definitely take you up on that offer." Touko stood with little help from N and put the photo album back on the bookshelf next to Touya's bed where it belonged. "C'mon!" She stuck her hand out for N to take.

He took his partner's hand and let her partially pull him up. When Touko grunted under his apparent weight, N puffed out a laugh and stood himself up. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Touya watching them, his expression a painful mixture of jealousy and bitterness. As soon as he caught Touya's eye, however, the smaller man put on his best show smile – a rather convincing thing, if N did say so.

After Touya nearly tripped over Touko's foot on the staircase ("I _swear_ I didn't do it on purpose!" Touko insisted), and the two siblings had bid their mother farewell, they headed outside of the quaint home to an even quainter sight of Nuvema Town, only to linger on the lawn for a few moments.

Touya smiled as he pulled out a camera from his bag. "I just realized…I don't have a picture of _just_ you guys for my album at home. Let's get one now, yeah?"

"What is it with you two and _pictures_?" Touko sighed, but her smirk was far from saying anything about irritation. "If it'll make you happy, then I guess we'll have to take it, huh?"

"You thought you had a choice?" Touya laughed. "Oh, you're so naïve, sis! Now get cozy with your boy-toy so I can take the damn picture and go home."

N didn't complain when Touko locked her arms around his middle and squeezed, leaning up to kiss his cheek. After the first flash (in which he was certain he had a very stupid expression on his face), N twisted his body until he too could wrap himself around his partner, and kissed her so that even the camera would know how he felt about her.

Touya seemed happy – in a heavy, diluted sort of way – once he'd gotten that shot. "Thanks, guys."

"How are you getting home anyway, Touya? You don't have a Pokémon that can fly with you, do you?" Touko frowned at her brother, still holding N. Her ear was pressed to his collar bone and a shy smile graced her lips when N rested his chin atop her head.

"Don't concern yourself with how I'm getting home! Cappuccino's back at my apartment, so I took Yulia with me." Touya pulled a Pokéball from his pocket and released an elegant white-feathered Swanna from its temporary residency. The Swanna cooed and stretched her wings, clearly pleased to be outside in the fresh afternoon air.

"_Today seems like a good day to fly. Let's be off, Touya! Off at once!"_ She danced gracefully around Touya, tugging routinely on his jacket's sleeve with every revolution before he took the hint.

"Alright, alright – give me a minute, Yulia." Touya turned back to N and Touko, inclining his head. "Take care of her, you hear, N?"

N straightened his posture out of old habit from former stern addresses. "Yessir."

Touko rolled her eyes and snapped, "Oh, go on, Touya! Stop trying to subtly threaten my boyfriend."

They heard Touya laugh before the swan Pokémon swooped up and carried him home, and they were left alone outside Touko's childhood home.

Without truly realizing it, N began to voice his concerns. "Is Touya okay? He seems a little—"

He couldn't even finish the sentence before Touko caught on. "A little sadder? A little more…jealous?" She sighed, extracting herself from N's hold. "Yeah. Touya's always been really lonely, you know. It's harder for him to find a relationship, and even then, he's forced to deal with what other people think of him."

N frowned. "What would be so wrong about Touya dating? He's just like the rest of us."

For some reason, Touko began to smirk up at N, as if he were not in on an inside joke. N didn't really like the feeling that he was missing something. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Touya's…_y'know_," Touko responded. Her smirk gave way to a heavy frown. The only time she ever looked so sad was when she worried for other people – her brother being the most frequent of choices.

Trying and failing to force words out of his mouth, N gave up on the half-formed reassurances and not-quite-there words of comfort and settled on a rather unimpressive "Oh."

Oh was right – the way Touya acted whenever N got too close made more sense now.

Because the good graces of the world seemed to be giving N a break, they smiled upon the poor man. Touko seemed somewhat amused thanks to those damned graces. Her amusement was not strong enough to mask the very real concern etched deeply into her face. "Yeah. I worry for him, y'know? It's like…he's hated by a good portion of the population just because of something so insignificant, like _that_. I think it's really going to break him sometime soon, and – and I really, _really_ hate seeing him cry. Touya's just so hard on himself."

"Hey, now – don't think like that," N tutted in a smooth, dulcet tone. He reached a hand out to stroke soothing circles with his thumb on Touko's cheek. "Touya's a tough guy. He can get through this. He just needs to sort through it, and if he realizes that he can't do it on his own, he'll come to you. He always does, right? Just like you always do with him." _Because,_ N realized, _this isn't just about Touya, is it?_

"You're right." Touko nodded, her brief moment of panic nearly receded with the tide of negative emotions that it had rushed in with. She put a hand over N's to stop the movement and smiled weakly at him. "I just want him to be happy." It was like she left out the rest of her thoughts, for the convenience of avoiding her own problems.

Behind them, the ocean lapped away serenely at the grains of sand comprising a single strip of beach – unaware of the damage it caused, how much foreign sand would have to be imported to stop the beach from disappearing altogether. Like a mind game, the play continued, until one gave and the other could be cluelessly happy or wholly unhappy. Sanity was a delicate thing to play with. How long would it take until Touya admitted he needed help?

"It's not a _bad_ thing to want him to be happy, Touko." N reached into his pocket and grasped the Pokéball he found tightly. He thought how awful it would be to feel like Touya – on the cusp of loneliness and ready to fall over the precipice of despair, because nothing in his life was completely tangible – and realized that at some point in his life, he had felt the same longing as that man. "It's not a bad thing for Touya to want to be happy, either." _It's not a bad thing for you to be happy while he's miserable._

"I know," she whispered. Her eyes slid shut in refusal to meet the brilliant sun. "I know." She swayed with the flow of the briny ocean, pitching forward on a phantom down tempo.

He wanted to remind her that he wasn't going anywhere – that she wasn't going to wake up one morning and find all traces of the life she'd built upon in the last year gone without a trace, like smoke from the bonfire. He wanted her to know that this – _everything_ – was okay just belonging in her life.

So he leaned down and kissed her.

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><p>This is a pretty late update…we hoped to have this out by last weekend, but our Storyboarding group met up for admissions week, so we were working on <em>that<em> all week. I had to write, like, a million different epilogue scenarios, and then Sock had to draft out the character designs. It was sad and miserable, and as much as I like the new characters, I wish we hadn't fallen behind in our writing schedule and given you _this_ to read. Well…I hope you at least enjoyed it a little bit. /end rant

Still marveling at the beauty of Sock's character designs…sigh….

-Allen "Broh" B.

My head hurts. Um…enjoyed it? I hope _you_ did, at least. I can't think enough to leave a longer author's note. On the bright side, how many of you like Touya? You'll see more of him in the next one-shot. ;D And if you haven't read Past Artifice yet, this is a companion piece to it in the newly-dubbed "Color Wheel Universe". **Cappuccino** is a Cinccino belonging to Touya, by the way. I still don't have that list written, because really, I'm busy writing these one-shots.

Fuhaha (Brock laughs like this, did you know that?)! Whatever Touya's problem is, we're going to let you guess at it until our next one-shot comes out. Thanks for reading~!

-Jen "Sock" B.


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